Glitteramous

The Sprout has a habit of making up and mashing up words to best express just exactly how beautiful something should be. Usually that something is a version of a princess/fairy/ballerina/bride or anything that might be frothy, flowing, bouncy or decorated. This past week her new word for that was glitteramous, as in:

"Mommy, I don't like that cake. It's not glitteramous"
"Mommy, I want Santa to bring me a bride dress - one that is GLITTERAMOUS!"
(exasperated sigh) "Mommy why can't I wear ALL THE DRESS UPS to the doctor?! You know I like to be glitteramous!"

However glitteramous makes me think of something that is both glittery and enormous.

Like a ballerina hippopotamus.

Is this glitteramous enough for you Sprout?

Orni-theology

If dinner tasted good tonight it was a miracle because in the middle of cooking squash casserole, the Fry and Sprout burst into the kitchen shouting "mommy mommy I think we need to help this baby bird!"

They had found a tiny, featherless hatchling that had fallen into the mulch by our deck. While the squash boiled over, I spent 20 minutes getting the baby bird back in the nest under the 12 foot high eaves of said deck. During the rescue, Fry christened the bird "Cuteson if it's a boy, Cutsie if it's a girl."

Cute-son/sie was reunited with a sibling in the nest but I didn't have the heart to tell the kids' relieved faces how nature usually works this out.

Instead I had a flash of insight that this might be a good time to throw in a little bit of faith. Unlike mothers who have it all together, these insights are not an everyday occurence for me so I figured I'd better grab it. We sat on the stairs and asked God to return Cutsie/Cutson's mother to the nest. During the course of this 45 second conversation with God, Fry changed the bird's name 5 times: "it's Cuter mommy, no I said Curter... I mean Curtis and Chris if it's a girl. I mean Chrissy. Curtis and Chrissy. Except I meant Cu...."

At this point I interjected that God probably knew the bird's name. Nevertheless Fry ended with "please bring the mother bird home and make sure she asks You for his name. Amen." So we're hoping for a tiny miracle under the eaves of the deck. A tiny miracle with the correct name.

On the anniversary of our last full nights sleep: a short illustrated trip to the movies

The same phrase describes my marriage and my breasts: Before the kids, they used to be such a cute couple ~ Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Seven years ago tonight, Jim Dear and I did not go to the movies. We went to eat at Tin Angel, I remember being shocked that at 9 months pregnant I could still eat a whole steak. Little did we know some few hours later as Small Fry entered our lives, how much our tiny marriage would be pushed and pulled and remodeled into a family.

Although we did not go to the movies that night, trips to the theater figure very prominently into our family's history. Most of our friends know how Jim Dear proposed on the stage of the Belcourt Theater. As newlyweds we went to the theater 2 and 3 times a week, sometimes dashing out at midnight. Then after kids, these became less frequent - and much earlier - treasured nights to ourselves. I vividly remember our first date night after baby to see Chronicles of Narnia, as it turns out watching an opening scene where the mother puts her kids on the train during a war is not the best idea for a new mom's fragile hormonal emotional state.

We eagerly anticipated taking Small Fry and Baby Sprout to their first movies. What fun to watch them in the darkness as their saucer eyes followed the screen! The glow of Buzz and Lightening McQueen and Princess Tiana on screen is barely a match for the movie magic glow in their eyes afterwards.

Somedays I muse about years into the future in which Jim Dear and I might once again be able to go to the movies on a moment's notice, with no babysitter or booster seat involved.

So tonight while the birthday presents for Small Fry wait downstairs to be wrapped, I'm posting this short history of our life at the movies - so far. Happy Birthday to Small Fry and happy anniversary to us.

A recent romp at the playground

These kids need to get out of my sketchbook. A recent trip to the playground proved to be fertile ground for inspiration:

A Real Danger on the Road

During this summer of multi-camping, the Fry has learned many new things: "Recycle, stop making garbage," says Go Green Camp Vandy. "Help the animals, protect their habitat," says the Nashville Zoo. "Share with your friends," says Vacation Bible School.

But my personal favorite is what the Fry learned from Safety Week at Bounce U.

"Don't be distracted while driving."

Apparently the police officer who visited admonished the kids to never text or talk and drive.... all very good and worthwhile advice. But I'd like to know why the good officer didn't talk to the kids about correcting a REAL distraction while driving, something even more dangerous than sending the occasional grocery list item to your husband before you forget for the 5th day in a row.

I'm talking about a situation like this:

Just say ya-ya-ya-yes to Va-Va-Va- VBS

Last week, after years of Mommy working on Lifeway's VBS curriculum, Small Fry got to experience the magic first hand. We signed him up for Amazing Wonders Aviation at a nearby church. This worked out especially well because, as he was cruising around the world, stopping at all the natural wonders like the Grand Canyon and Paricutin (which I learned to spell last year since I had to draw it three times) I was at home working on next year's production.

Small Fry was totally hooked and I got to see some of my craft and song illustrations come to life.

I particularly remember working on this one after midnight one night, caffeinated with Mello Yello and Snow Patrol:

I remember redoing the sketch below several times just to get the ages and expressions of the characters right:

During family night at Judson Baptist, the kids put on a show of all the songs they had learned during the week. Over the years I have drawn reams and reams of hand choreography, sign language motions and various poses set to music. Pages of art suggestions and lyrics cover the floor as I twist my hands in front of my mirror trying to create exactly how this looks on a 7 year old. Watching the kids bounce through the actual songs, I couldn't help but laugh at myself thinking how many times I've wondered, "ok, does the left or right hand go first? is it up and then down? then up again??"

By the time the kids got to the final number I was holding a squirmy Sprout and didn't get any video, but I did get this shot:

100 kids singing along! No wonder I do so many music drawings.

Besides the cool factor of seeing my work, it was also the first time I've seen the full scope of every designed, illustrated, and printed piece. Even I had no idea there was that much....my work is one island on a huge planet! I have extra respect for the folks I work with at Lifeway that they are able to direct so many different parts and have them all come out stellar. Walking around the halls at Judson you could see how everyone's effort really put the kids in the moment. In the pick-up line on the first day, Fry said "Mommy I want to go back tomorrow!"

Fry and Sprout are looking forward to starting VBS at our church this week. It's not my work this time, but I can't argue with something that makes my kids get excited about going to church. And while they are swimming around the ocean I'll be working on the top of my to-do list: "work on 2013 craft sketches"

Hello Summer

What Sunday morning might look like with Rush's version of logic:

Anyone who thinks the behavior exhibited in this picture is abnormally bad doesn't have kids.

oh and I'm throwing this into Illustration Friday - Intention.... as in surely this is not his intention?

Sketchbook Sunday - Yoga, toothpaste, and the moon

This week my illustrators group had the pleasure of having incredible yoga instructor, Taunia Rice, to model for us. She went through a series of 1 minute, 5 minute and 15 minutes poses.... each one more beautiful that the last. Fellow illustrator Susan Eaddy put it perfectly when she said, "It's like trying to capture steps from a dance." Here are a couple of sketches I was proud of. I really hope to draw Taunia again.

I really hate to admit it but I'm really bad about getting my kids to brush their teeth in the morning. By the time I get them downstairs, fed, dressed and ready to walk out the door I can't bear the idea letting them go back upstairs to brush their teeth. The playroom is just steps away from the bathroom and they will certainly get sucked into its whirling vortex of power. Honestly, the importance of getting to school on time with my blood pressure in the normal range has trumped dental health. So I quietly felt guilty about this until last week when I figured out a solution: duh, we have a sink in the kitchen. So now the Fry and Sprout climb up and find a spot amongst the dirty dishes from the night before and brush away. Slightly disgusting, yes... but less disgusting than not brushing at all. And certainly less guilt inspiring for me.

Since Sprout has been in her big girl bed, she is fascinated with the moon at night. It helps that with the new position of the bed in the room, she has an unobstructed view of the sky through the curtains. Every clear night she looks up, sounding surprised every time, and says "oh! the moon! the moon!" Then she stares at it enraptured. It's so dadgum cute I had to draw it.

illustration Friday- Midsummer Night

I'm once again combining my weekly sketchbook post with Illustration Friday because over the weekend - on a midsummer night - we took the Small Fry to see Cars 2.

Oh the excitement.

The Fry could barely contain himself through the 15 minutes of previews before getting to the main event. What helped was the 50 gallon drum of popcorn we bought him for dinner... uh I mean, to eat during the movie.

It ended up with me holding the popcorn so that he could more easily slurp from his giant lemonade. He buzzed through both in the 120 minutes it took for Tow Mater to become a 007 agent.

Disobedience

Every night in a good faith effort to get the kids in the general direction of a bath, we unleash something terrible around our house.

It snarls.

It growls.

It howls.

And if it has to, it will gobble up a hapless toddler who doesn't strip a diaper off fast enough. It is......



At approximately 7:15 most nights Baby Sprout runs through the house streaking "the trolls are coming! the trolls are coming!" whilst leaving a trail of clothing behind. Its definitely the highlight of her night.

To be continued....On another note, here's the first two sketches for a narrative I've been thinking of illustrating. Its about a boy who tried to take extra special care of his mother..... and then she went and ignored his specific advice. The words are not mine, and credit must be given to the great A.A. Milne:

James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree



Took great care
of his Mother,
though he was only three....

First Base is a Million Miles Away

After winning back to back games on Thursday, Small Fry's baseball team was positioned to compete for their division championship. In the giddy moments that followed their second win of the night, the Sprout and I walked up onto the field so that she could run the bases and work out some energy. She had longed to be where brother was all season after being held captive in the dugout for fourteen innings. You think you know what your kids face. After all, I'm the grown-up and the parent, I've already slogged through childhood and lived to tell about it. But when I stepped into the brilliant glare of home plate and looked across the yawning stretch of dirt and grass to the flickering back fence in the outfield, I had but one thought....

.... jesus, I had no idea first base was a million miles away.

In that moment I was extra proud of my Fry for a season of climbing into that harsh light, isolated from teammates and parents, and swinging at the ball with everything he had. To me the distance to first base was unnerving, but Small Fry had never seemed phased by it. Was this because he believed that this time the bat would make contact, this time he would make it to first base before the ball did.....no matter how many times he'd missed in the past? Did he believe better than a grown-up could?

Small Fry says "you just go up there and watch for the ball and then you try to hit it, then you try to run really fast. That's how you do it mommy."



Two days later on a sweltering Saturday morning, the Orioles clinched their championship with a final score of 10-8. One of the points belonged to Small Fry who dashed across home plate to start a points rally that would bring his team from behind to take the lead in the 3rd inning. In the beginning of the season we parents had contributed $10 each to buy our boys a "participation medal." None of the 4, 5, and 6 year olds on our team had ever played baseball before. A championship - and the trophy that came with it - seemed well out of reach, we only hoped for a fun few months in the sun and a positive learning experience. However, not only were they in reach, one by one twelve gleaming, gold and red trophies, emblazoned with the heady word "champions" were handed to our dusty, grinning team. Small Fry hugged his to his chest and said "see Mommy if you hit the ball once you get the biggest trophy ever!"

Summer Begins

This past week the kids were out of their WeekDay School Program for the break between spring and summer sessions. I managed to keep the bickering and whining to a minimum . . . and the kids were pretty good also. Memorial Day weekend finally rolled around we spent the entire weekend on the deck. The splash pool was pulled out and two hours later a couple of soggy kids finally came in for lunch. The flagship image of that morning is Small Fry running and jumping into the pool. I don't think my sketchbook was actually big enough to accurately capture how much water is displaced from a 60 inch pool when a 38 pound boy barrels into it.


Small Fry also took part in his first tree planting. A friend had given us a small maple, with the advice that maples do well in rocky soil. Jim Dear dug the hole, while Fry anxiously watched to see if we would hit a giant boulder. Amazingly, we dug right down into soft dark dirt and the tiny tree was planted and watered judiciously by Fry and Sprout, each arguing over who got to roll the hose down to it. Jim Dear and I joked that we play a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors every time we plant something. . . only in our backyard its Rock, Rock, Dirt.

Things Right on Top of Our Nose

In this week's installment I have to post about one of the cutest, itty bitty, tiny things you can imagine. At first I wasn't even sure they were there.... I peered closer in the bathtub thinking it was just dirt. So I scrubbed harder but, no, they did not disappear.

I'm talking, of course, about Small Fry's freckles.

It seems that all this outdoor time with baseball has caused a smattering of brown dust to bloom across his nose. Small Fry is not as overcome about this as I am. His response was "will they eat me?"


Freckles aren't the only things coming out now that the days are longer and warmer. Round here we are experiencing the beginning of the 13 year cicadas. For the next four weeks these critters will be underfoot and smeared on windshields. They've waited 13 years underground to finally emerge, leave their husks behind, fall madly in love, consummate said love, and then die (presumably they were not planning on the windshield part.) This is Small Fry's first cicada invasion and he's smitten. So far we have collected half a dozen husks, bringing them home carefully in the car by hooking their little husk pod legs into the car's upholstery. Yesterday the Fry picked up a live one for the first time. Actually it picked him. In a flurry of wings and eyes it buzzed up and landed on his hand. It gazed at Fry for moment with its weird, red, lazy eye stare - then it was gone.

"Ewww, cool," said Fry, "will it eat me?"


Fortunately it turns out cicadas are just as harmless as freckles.

What do you get when you don't get what you want?

A learning experience....

I'll begin my weekly post with a sketch for Illustration Friday's theme - Lesson. Last week we were desperately out of food in our house. Old Mother Hubbard's dog was long keeled over. So I did the unthinkable - I grocery shopped with two children. Allow me to set the scene: Fry and Sprout had been to Sweet Cece's Yogurt joint earlier in the day and the sugar buzz was just ratcheting into high gear. Then there was the Holy Grail of shopping carts in the waiting area, the red Shop Buggy. After they clambered in with Sprout riding shotgun, I (stupidly) agreed to let them remain unbuckled. We set off to purchase wholesome and nutritious food.

Fast forward forty-five minutes.

We are now exiting the store. Instead of following my carefully prepared list I have purchased spaghetti sauce, but no spaghetti; a gallon of milk, some pretzel crackers, and a box of Kroger breakfast bars. We also have in tow, not one, but two helium filled balloons that a store employee foisted upon me as we rounded Aisle 9 in a well meaning attempt to distract my little darlings from starting a chain reaction of falling soup cans with their outstretched arms.

Said balloons are attached to two giant suckers.

Just what we need, more sugar.

For a while afterward Baby Sprout was content to garner Mommy's attention by slathering her unwrapped sucker along the floor beneath the Shop Buggy. Fry popped his lollipop directly in his mouth and proceeded to garner Sprouts attention by encouraging her to pop her balloon - and when she didn't fall for it, trying to pop it himself.

Thus we become one of those families in the Nippers Corner Kroger.

The moral of the story? It is better to drive through McDonald's for the third time this week than attempt to keep your wits, your coupons, and your calorie counts in order while accompanying two children to the grocery store.

Lesson learned.


However it was not all cheap dusty suckers this week for the Fabulous Illustrator
I did have some sweets, particularly these sketches for a licensing project. Each cupcake will be for a different greeting card - birthday, new baby, wedding etc, Here's some of the sketches. These will be done with flatter color and some repeating patterns behind them. Again a bit of a departure from my usual style but I'm really digging this not having to worry about light source thing.

The first few sketches:

The final sketch for the wedding cupcake:


And finally I'm pleased to show the first finished illo in my "portfolio facelift" series. This is for The Princess and the Pea

Congratulations. . . it's a flower

Right off the bat I'll just say I've decided to stop titling every sketchbook sunday post with "Sketchbook Sunday"..... since Sunday (or Monday night) is usually when I post at all..... um..... I'll just think of a witty headline and leave the Sketchbook Sunday part in the tags.

There, thats pretty good for spring cleaning.

Since it is spring around here, that means one thing in the Fabulous Illustrator's house: yard work. Last year we moved to a house that had a smaller yard than our "starter house," and this yard had absolutely no landscaping of any kind. While I thought this would be easier, alas I was mistaken. For the last 12 months I've looked out at our barren yard in frustration so now the planting has begun in earnest. Right after moving in a year ago, Jim Dear gave me a white peony for our anniversary. I had had a peony at our old house that I'd coddled along... it bloomed once and then disappeared for 3 years. Nevertheless, the year we put the house on the market, out it came with two buds - but we sold the house before I ever got to see it bloom again. So when I planted this new peony, I fully expected to enjoy it for a few months and then not see it again, except as a few tiny stalks, for several years.

The peony had other plans.

Much to my surprise it sprang forth from the ground practically overnight and is now sporting two large fat buds. A princess with child could not be watched and clucked over as much as I've fussed over these two round blooms in waiting. Last year it was in full bloom on our anniversary in May so I'm expecting to be a peony parent any day now.


NO, a chocolate green cupcake, Mommeeeee!Baby Sprout is a lot of things but dainty and retiring she is not. As I mentioned in this earlier post, she is a big fan of cupcakes, even when she has to imagine them. Last week, while I was cooking dinner, Sprout was "making" cupcakes and bringing them to me to taste. First she made a blue cupcake, then she made a pink cupcake, then she made a green cupcake. When I suggested she make a chocolate cupcake, Sprout was less than ecstatic about my taste preference.

"NOO, no chocolate!" she bellowed

"But chocolate is good, Sprout."

"NO CHOCOLATE, JUST GREEN!!"

"ok," I replied quickly, "just green."

"NO MOMMY, NOT JUST GREEN...... A CHOCOLATE GREEN CUPCAKE!!!! EAT IT MOMMEEE!!!"

Believe me, I ate it and I kept my mouth shut about having a pink strawberry cupcake.

America's Favorite Past-time on Sketchbook Sunday

Parents of future little leaguers beware: baseball is the All Encompassing Past-time. Little did we know 6 weeks ago when Small Fry started that our schedules would begin to revolve around a dusty patch of ground off Hogan Road in Creive Hall. Now we have practice two nights a week, games two nights a week plus tacked on scrimmages in the back yard to help the Fry connect bat with ball and ball with glove. It seems to be working, at Saturday's game the Fry got a hit and actually got on base. Fry was up at bat and I was distracted with Baby Sprout in the dugout when a solid "konk" sounded across the field.


I looked up in time to see the Fry drop the bat - stunned - and stare at the coach.

The ball coasted to a stop in the dust two inches from the pitcher's toe.

Then everyone in the dugout including Baby Sprout started yelling "Run! Run!"

Small Fry made it to first base and later the coach gave him the game ball for getting his first hit in the season.

We actually won that game, though we parents tell ourselves that winning doesn't matter as long as the boys have fun and learn how to play. The boys certainly don't seem to care: at tonight's game the scoreboard wasn't working so our guys didn't even know who won until the game was over. The news that we'd pulled off another win was second rate compared to the sight of Star Wars gummies and chocolate chip cookies for after-game snack. With snacks and bats and hats and whiney baby sisters we packed up the van and headed home.

On the way, Fry asked "when do we play again?"

"Practice is Wednesday," I answered.

Soon enough.

Everything I Need to Know I Learned from My HorseFor several years now I've tossed around the idea in my head of writing a book called Everything I Need to Know I Learned from My Horse. Mostly I get these ideas in the bathtub at night when every idea, even the lame ones, seem good and completely accomplishable. Notwithstanding the fact that this series would be interesting only to me and therefore completely unpublishable, I decided it would be fun to illustrate them as part of Sketchbook Sunday. To begin, a little background about the Fabulous Illustrator for the uninitiated: For the first 14 years of my life, all I wanted was a horse. I was the typical horse-crazy girl: collecting pictures of magnificent prancing steeds and lists of the names I would give them like "Mary's Jubilee Star" and "Princess Silver Blaze."

Yeah.

All up until I finally convinced my parents to let me buy an 18 month old Welsh filly named Lady Lee. She was scraggly brownish gray with a white stripe down her face and I promptly rechristened her Kala. From the start I had to train her to do everything. She wasn't even that crazy about coming up to me - until I repeatedly showed up with food. That was the beginning of my education about how to use common sense. I am a firm believer that horses are the perfect animal from which to learn about humans. They have both the best and worst traits of human personality: courage, loyalty, and a sense of humor as well as stubbornness, meanness and greed (just try to hide a carrot from one.) If you can get a 1200 pound animal capable of putting you in the hospital without much effort, to, not only do what you ask, but actually like you in the process, then you are also a good ways along the path towards getting along with their human counterparts.

So to the first lesson I learned from my horse:
Rule number one, Don't Panic.

When Kala saw something strange like stick that might be a snake, she didn't mess around. Like lightening streaking the wrong way, straight up off the ground came her front feet. Since in the beginning, after having spent my money on said horse and what was left on her upkeep, I had no funds for a saddle, I was often riding bareback. In this split second of vertical incline I was left clinging to her mane and sides with two choices: panic and be left hanging in mid-air when her feet returned to earth and she bolted, or figure out how to stay calm, calm her down, and show her - there, there - it's just a stick.

Happily, I learned this lesson quickly.

The notion of Don't Panic has stayed with me over the years. Two weeks ago, bad storms roared through middle Tennessee bringing tornados with them. In the middle of the afternoon with wind banging on the house and the weather people telling us to get to our "safe place" I went under the stairs with a cordless phone and a laptop.

It was a damn sight more scarey than being dumped off a horse.

But, on cue, years of horse-borne common sense kicked in and Don't Panic prevailed. While I might have been pretty scared I thought clearly enough to keep a phone conversation going with Jim Dear the whole time I was crouched under blankets with a flashlight, hitting reload on Weather.com.

Don't panic means carefully steer around the deer that just jumped in front of your car, or listen to what your spouse says before you start the fight, or calmly ask your child to put the spider down. Don't panic was the first of many, but possibly the best, lesson Kala taught me on a hot spring day more than 20 years ago.

Sketchbook Sunday - Granbery bound

Well that was a fast 5 years.

This week I have only one sketch to share and it's to commemorate an important occasion: we registered the Small Fry for kindergarten. He'll be attending a school of 600 kids, with eight kindergarten classes. This seems just enormous to me though I've been told it's not. All in all he took registration and the tour in stride. When asked about his favorite part of the school he says "the stage", meaning where the parents can some eat lunch with the students in the cafeteria. I think this is mostly because during this part of the tour he was jumping off the stage with another kid while I hissed furtively in front of the PTA president-mom.

When I sketched this, at first I planned to make the school quite large, looming over the Fry. Then I realized that is not a very positive portrayal of Fry's next step. So I changed to this, a bravado packed boy, backpack slung at the side, facing confidently into his future.

Illustration Friday/Sketchbook Sunday - Stir

This week I am multi-tasking and combining my Sketchbook Sunday and Illustration Friday post. Illustration Friday's topic this week is stir. I was inspired by one of Baby Sprouts books, Foodie Baby, for this sketch. The whole idea of the book is to answer the question "what do foodie babies do?" So in the book they do things like "say cheese" and "browse in farmer's markets." I decided to add my own "what foodie babies do" (as I've explained in earlier posts that Baby Sprout definitely is a foodie baby) with this illo and caption:
Foodie babies help stir.


On Tuesday this past week, my illustrator's group met to do some life figure drawings. We hired the 12 year old granddaughter of one member as our model. She was beautiful, like drawing a baby racehorse, all long arms and long toes and big eyes. Here's a few of my favorites:




Finally I had to do this illo from Small Fry's spring concert. His class sang Going to the Zoo and they all had these crazy animal masks on their heads. Actually they weren't really animal masks... they were really insect masks. He was a spider. His teacher explained, slightly apologetically, that that's all they had a Target. "No biggie," I said, "there's spiders at the zoo." Fry stood next to his ... ahem.... friend, Anna which, I have to say, definitely seemed to contribute to his improved ability to focus and belt out the song. Almost like he was trying to impress someone...

To be filed under: Things I didn't think I'd hear this soon

Today Small Fry casually mentioned that a little girl in his class, Anna, was sick. "oh," I said, "thats too bad. I hope she's better soon."

"Me too" said the Fry, "because she's my girlfriend."

(sound of jaw hitting floor)

Me: "cough cough -oh? really?" (internal monlogue: WHAAAT!!!! How does he even know about such things, he's FIVE!)

I then proceeded to ask some *random* questions about what it's like to have a girlfriend. Apparently they "just decided it" and they "don't do anything but they looove each other"

ooooookaaaaaaaayyyyy

Well Anna is a very nice little girl. Small Fry had a marathon play date at her house this past weekend and didn't want to leave. When he finally got home I joked to Jim Dear that maybe she was his kindergarten crush. Darn that mom's intuition. Now all of a sudden the extra valentine from little Julia and the Halloween goodies from Annie are taking on a whole new significance.

And I cant forget that the weekend before playing with Anna, he'd been asking to go Eowynn's house. And Ella's.

Oh my goodness. Could my small, sweet, space loving, smart aleck-y little boy be a.... a.... a ladies man?

Stay tuned....